The Hunt for the Emeralds
by Pie Badger
Summary: Rouge entertains an unusual guest with an even more unusual story. A small fic written as part of a larger fanmade universe.
1. Meeting

The scorching heat of the Yellow Desert descended upon Cathode in a record-setting summer day, or so the radio chatter announced. The populace needed no statistical warnings to hide: in cafés, under awnings, a few even braving the open walkways beneath the shelter of umbrellas and hats. No clouds dared show themselves before the heat of the day, leaving a cloudless expanse of teal overhead.

But there, in a low, shady room, there was an oasis of coolness, lit only by what sunlight pierced the curtains of the generously sized bay windows. And there, at the far end of the coffee table, there was another, fainter light, one distinctly green.

Rouge played the little piece of gemstone between her fingers, weighing it, feeling the smoothness of its edges and evaluating the consistency of the color all in seemingly careless little gestures. It was hardly the first time a stranger had turned up on her doorstep with a strange jewel demanding assistance, but, well… she spared a glance across the table at the man currently sitting in her parlor. He didn't strike her as a jeweler. You'd have to be either daft or have something very important to hide to be so dedicatedly swaddled on a day such as this, and that was by no means a light cloak thrown over the head to keep out the sun. His hands ended in a set of thick, dark claws that looked like they could crush a steel beam between them, the rest of the hand covered in dense red fur. He was enormous, whatever he was, at the very least some kind of badger or boar tribesman.

His head moved behind his hood, and she felt more than saw him meet her gaze. Rouge smiled, batting her eyelashes for good measure, and went back to toying with the little scrap of emerald. She was really only keeping it up because sooner or later he'd get annoyed enough to act. Maybe even annoyed enough to let up some of that aura of mystery he was so aggressively defending.

Rouge was a connoisseur when it came to jewels. No flashy little trinket could hold her attention if it wasn't even a persuasive fake. Normally, this jagged shard half the length of her forearm wouldn't so much as hold her attention. Its deep viridian hue was fetching, but she'd seen finer.

No, what _really_ had her was the fact that, ever so faintly, in a register she could just barely hear, the stone was singing.

"Pretty little piece," she remarked, setting it down on the table. His hands twitched unsubtly, as if considering seizing it the moment it left her hands.

"But you have seen others?" he insisted. She tried to place his accent: it was very thick, and he contemplated his words, speaking somewhat clumsily. Not a native, then. Downuda? Could be.

"Listen, sweetheart, you aren't the first person to wave an emerald under my nose. I have to have seen twenty of these things in the last month alone."

He suppressed a growl, emitting only a small grunt of breath. Her ear flicked with a tinkling of brass droplets, catching the frustrated noise. Good, good.

She made a rather theatrical sigh, waving a hand dismissively. "I don't exactly keep files of every rock that comes in here, you know? I have a job, and believe it or not, it isn't this. Take it to an appraiser if you want—"

The stranger surged to his feet, and she was reacquainted with just how tall he actually was. His hands hit the table with a _thump_ that made both of her ears turn back just to protect themselves. "You are not understanding! I hear—" he had to cut himself off in his anger, pick the right words. "I hear that you are ear of this city. All that happens, hear from you first. You make your," his muzzle crinkled. "_radioshow_, you talk about green stars. Come down from sky. I have to know if a person has brought you any star. Like _that_." He jabbed a claw decisively at the little emerald shard.

Ah, so _that's_ what this was all about. A smirk crept out from the corner of her mouth. "Hm. Didn't know you were a fan." Of course he wasn't, if he'd only tracked her by word of mouth "Yes, I made a broadcast about a meteor shower. Just a little something, I like to keep my listeners up to date."

_Hmm._ So the meteor shower was a rain of jewels, was it? And here was a foreigner, not two days later, being awfully secretive and awfully demanding.

Rouge leaned forwards, slowly placing her finger on the emerald shard. "Maybe, just _maybe_ I've seen something like this. Maybe it was on a walk. Or was it in a store window? Who knows…"

He produced an expression that was technically a smile but looked a lot closer to a grimace. "That is many _maybe_." He shifted forwards, thickly corded muscle bunching in his forearms. "I do not think you understand—"

"Oh I understand all right," she let her airy demeanor drop. "I understand you're trying awfully hard to get me to spill what I know without giving anything in return. That's no way to treat a lady, you know. _Especially_ not when she has something you really want." Her fingers knit together, the membranes of her wings falling over her front. "What _I_ want is for you to convince me. Give me a reason this is my problem, and I'll forget you're trying to threaten me in my own house."

This time he actually did growl, a nice baritone rumble. Like the piece of rock on the table between them, it was a nice attempt but she'd seen a lot better.

"Of course, you could always take your little gem and leave. Talk to someone else. Maybe you're lucky and after a few hours you'll find someone who knows what I do. Up to you." She smiled her very sweetest.

With a low grumble, he sat back down.

_Thought so_. "Let's start with names, shall we? We haven't been properly introduced." Which was putting it lightly; he'd barged into the nearly empty club and all but threw the emerald at her, and she'd decided this one was probably best dealt with upstairs, and that led nicely to the moment she'd started studying the stone in detail.

A dry, derisive snort. "I know who you are. Songbird of Cathode, Rouge Ellery. I had thought bird had more feathers, but," he shrugged.

Rouge arched one manicured eyebrow. _Excuse me?_ "I'm afraid you have the benefit of me, then," she didn't bother to keep the clipped tone out of her voice.

This question, strangely enough, seemed to throw him; he broke eye contact for a moment to gaze searchingly at a potted plant. "I'm am…" He muttered something under his breath that had entirely too many consonants per vowel. "…Knuckles," he clarified.

Her other eyebrow joined its twin. "Of course." Well, it didn't look like he was terribly bright when it came up to aliases. Whether that was reassuring or problematic remained to be seen.

She didn't need to see past the hood to put together the utterly affronted look he wore in response. He shook his head quickly, as if to clear himself of the offense. "Listen, this piece? Is _very_ important that I find them. Not in small manner. Is in… possibly world destroying manner. Very important."

There were few things that could get her attention quite that quickly. "How can you be not sure if something is going to destroy the world? That sounds fairly definite to me."

"It is _old_ legend!" Knuckles jumped upright again; this time, though, he caught himself and eased back into his seat. "…Old legend, and stone has worn away. I forget pieces. Not sure of many things. I know it is _bad_." He sighed, leaning forwards, and for a moment he seemed… uncertain. Insecure. Generally traits that she didn't associate with the kind of people who muscled in on a lady's business and made demands.

"Well isn't that convenient. A nebulous, vague warning of oncoming danger of cataclysmic proportions. Do you have any idea how many harbingers of the apocalypse knock on my door telling me to accept the Lord Solaris as my Savior before I die a fiery death? Because right now you're sounding like a lot of them."

He made another offhand comment that she couldn't understand, though from the tone and general body language she gathered it was about her, and unfavorable. "You are going to have to trust me."

Rouge had a lot of things to say about trust. She was about to fire off one of them when Knuckles removed his hood, and acting on dignity-preserving instinct, her mouth closed on whatever might have accidentally escaped it.

She did _not_ gasp. Gasping at unexpected developments was one of the stupidest things that anyone could do, and it was beneath her. When unexpected things happened, smart people started paying attention.

Suffice to say, Rouge was paying a lot of attention just now.

"Knuckles" was an echidna.

It wasn't just a cursory resemblance, either. Tattoos rimming clear violet eyes, the elongate quills, the pointed anteater beak… it seemed that circumstances had conspired to drop a species four thousand years dead into her parlor, where he was sitting with the discomforted expression of someone being closely studied.

Rouge's attention shifted down to the little piece of emerald sitting innocuously on her table, still humming its little song.

"Suppose I believe you," she began conversationally. "Tell me more about this."


	2. City Slicking

The sun was shining, a few flickies were slowly working up the energy to sing…

"Is not here, I tell you."

…And Rouge was nearing the end of her quickly unraveling patience. The bat's ears were twitching under the scarf she'd donned to protect her face as she carefully studied the low-hanging branches of a nearby tree.

They had found two pieces in the park, a rare windfall given that the shattered fragments of the Heart seemed determined to scatter as far away from each other as possible. Not that it was a serious exertion to Knuckles— he was barely winded, and to his surprise, the bat woman had kept up very well. Admittedly, her makeup was starting to run in the heat, and she had disposed of the airy indifference, but neither of those were really valuable enough to constitute a loss in his book.

It was more than a little vexing, though, the way she insisted on that _device._ He listened to it beeping frantically as she swung it around, a tinny, pathetic little sound compared to the distant intonation of the Heart's broken pieces, the song drifting from afar on the torpid eddies of the otherwise still air.

It didn't trouble him that much, even with the heavy cloak on; it was the only one he owned, for climbing to the snowy peak of the red mountain, or else when the island passed over a particularly icy region. Now, it provided shade against the prowling sun, if nothing else.

Rouge was not faring quite so smoothly, even if she downplayed it. She was doing a lot of squinting behind the sunglasses, both at her little detector machine and at him, the few times he helpfully spoke up to remind her there were no more pieces in the park and that they should probably get going. She insisted there was something there, and the little beeping thing was still warbling its excitement, loud enough that he was surprised it wasn't shaking in her grip.

"I have to be on _top_ of it now…" she muttered, turning a slow circle on the spot. "It couldn't be buried, could it? Under the park, more likely…"

"Or machine is making mistake," Knuckles offered blithely, failing to suppress a grin as she glared at him over her shoulder.

"All right, how are you so sure?" She demanded haughtily, fixing her bangs and tucking them back under her scarf.

The question stuck him for a moment. How did you explain that, exactly? He just knew where the Heart was, in the same way that people knew where their hands or feet were at any given time. True, its spirit sang to him, but that was hardly a locator, more a general sense of distance and elevation. He'd have a heck of a time explaining that in his native tongue, much less this chirpy little bird-speak language.

"I… hear. In head, not with ears." Then, as a last-ditch effort to save _some_ face, he added, "Is difficult to explain. Is _knowing_."

Rouge's expression told him everything he needed to know. "You are not believing me."

"It's a bit of a stretch," she acknowledged, powering down her little beeping device before tucking it into her bag. "All right, prove it to me. Find a piece."

He made no effort to hide his look of satisfaction this time. "Thought you would not ask." He had to kneel to get on her eye level, sighting down the end of one tattooed arm as he indicated a building some two blocks away. "That, over there? Very high. Maybe roof, maybe… high floor. Will know as we get closer."

She wasn't watching where he was pointing nearly so much as she seemed to be watching _him_. It was more than a bit disquieting, how much attention she was paying at any given time. She wasn't just smart, she was a person constantly acting— not _stupid_, per se, but he really forgot how smart she was, and then he caught her watching from the corner of her eye, or catching some small slip he'd made…

Really, really disquieting. If he wasn't desperate at this point he probably wouldn't have trusted her at all…

…and yet, if he was being totally honest with himself, it wasn't exactly the worst time of his life. Sure he had the Second Coming of the God of Destruction hanging over his head and some ignorant idiot tearing around the countryside flippantly using its power but… other than that, she wasn't bad company. Just vaguely unsettling, extremely perceptive company.

Navigating the city wasn't too unlike traveling in his island; if anything, it was easier. Everything was in predictable patterns and lines, even if said lines bent and twisted together like snakes, it was nothing compared to the jungle. He kept to gliding in short bursts, climbing as high as he could on the buildings and punching through the surface when a handhold was not immediately available. Maybe at some point the residents of this city would notice and complain about the claw-shaped pocks dug into their structures, but that meant they'd still be alive and without greater concerns, which was completely fine by him. Best case scenario, he'd be back on his island and have forgotten about this by then.

That gave him pause, mentally if not physically. Could he really just _forget_ an entire world? Even if the Heart was restored, even if he put up better traps and invested in some sternly worded signs about hedgehogs and foxes, he'd been here. He'd felt the earth under his feet and seen the sky over his head; he'd spoken to the people here. Sooner or later someone was going to come to the island again.

The last time, he'd thought himself ready. He could fight the largest predators on the island on equal footing; his flesh turned back tooth, claw, and the worst of storms. If anything were to come seeking the Heart, seeking to undo what his ancestors had sacrificed so much to achieve, he would be ready. He would stop them.

It was precisely that thinking that had wound him up in _this _fine situation. Ignorance wasn't an option any more. It had already cost him too much. He had to learn something of this world. He had to start making connections.

He glanced at Rouge, soaring effortlessly on coasts of warm air. She flapped only occasionally, barely touching the air, as if it took no effort at all to keep climbing endlessly. She was well ahead of him by now, not having to stop and scale buildings for height as he did.

…No, that was a really stupid thought. She was smart, she was dangerous, and he knew _nothing_ about her except that the people of this city waxed poetic about her voice. And the general consensus: nothing happened in Cathode without Rouge Ellery hearing of it sooner or later. He was already sticking his neck out entirely too far even involving her in the hunt for the Heart. He'd only tell her enough so that she'd know the gem was more trouble than it was worth, and they'd go their separate ways, never to cross paths again. Right.

The Heart's lost shard pitched upwards, a ringing cry that seemed to echo in his ears. That was odd. He looked up at the building— Rouge had called it a 'high-rise', whatever in Gaia's mercy _that_ meant— and narrowed his eyes.

A flutter of membranous wings and Rouge alighted next to him. She'd pulled out her little tracker again and it was singing furiously. "Well, color me surprised big guy, you actually know your stuff."

"We should hurry." Mentally, he was running over the list of people who would be interested in the broken pieces of the Heart, and have the resources to track it down this quickly.

It was a very short list, and none of the names on it were people he really wanted to see right now.

This time he didn't even _try_ to care about the property damage; he simply climbed as fast as he could, his claws shearing through in ways that keratin and concrete probably shouldn't interact, if he was at a point to notice or care right then. Rouge had picked up the pace as well, moving in tight spirals with powerful downbeats. She couldn't hear the keening wail of the Heart, but whatever she read from his body language and expression must have been convincing enough.

He cleared the edge of the building with a sinking feeling in his stomach, having already recognized the garish red overcoat and the white-gloved hand holding the Heart's shard. His hands curled into fists, stray pieces of building digging into his palm, but Knuckles didn't really notice right now.

The man turned; sunlight glinted off of a pair of round glasses like darkened pits in an otherwise jovial face. A broad, toothy grin appeared under the dense, bushy moustache that he knew all too well.

"Well _well_, isn't this a pleasant surprise. Really, I should have expected no less of you, Guardian. It'd take more than a mere party trick to dispose of you."

/"_Eggman! You motherless son-of-a-"/_

"_Language,_ Guardian." The scientist wagged a long finger; as soon as it was not so occupied, the free hand fell to stroking his moustache. "I'm sure we can settle this reasonably."

A hand tapped on Knuckles' arm; when he looked to Rouge in disbelief, her focus was pointed straight ahead. "_Eggman_? The mad doctor? That's you?"

A faint, disdainful sniff. "You can't really expect me to keep up with every disdainful nickname they saddle me with. I would expect _you_ of all people would realize just how unreliable the media can be, Miss Ellery."

She folded her arms and cocked her head back, regarding the scientist with new interest. "Hm. So you know who I am. I'd congratulate you on doing your homework, but that's pretty low-hanging fruit." She sauntered forwards, putting something more substantial than her hand between Knuckles and Eggman. It wasn't really necessary; much as he wanted to tear the doctor into several pieces for being so flippant, for defiling the Heart, for _everything_ he'd done, the man at least deserved to be heard out. And _then_ maybe snapped like kindling. "You might as well just hand over that jewel you've got there."

Eggman arched a fleshy eyebrow. "Is that a threat?" he asked, sounding vaguely entertained by the prospect. "What, pray tell, do you expect to happen if I refuse?"

Rouge inspected her manicure for any microscopic flaws it might have accrued on the climb. "Well, I'm not terribly fond of violence, but I suppose I'd just step back and let my associate here take care of that. The two of you seem to have _quite_ a history."

Knuckles snorted. To put it extremely mildly.

Eggman raised his hands disarmingly, his left-hand fingers still closed over the emerald fragment. "Now now, I told you there's no need to be so brutish. In fact, if I may be _shockingly_ gracious given the circumstances, I'd like to extend a formal invitation to the both of you to discuss the matter in proper! …Regrettably, I don't have much time to delay, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to take my leave of you—"

Knuckles lunged, taking only a fraction of a second to dodge around Rouge. /_"Like HELL you are!"/_

Eggman's smile widened. He kicked at the ground in a sort of bizarre dance step and simply melted into the atmosphere, dissolving in the time it took the Guardian to cross to the center of the roof.

He was left grasping at nothing, his ears ringing with the last notes of the fading Heart's song.

It hurt too much to stand there. Hurt too much with the knowledge that he'd failed again, to the very same damned individual who didn't even know what he was tampering around with. It was much, much easier to swing his balled fist into a nearby AC unit, the metal crumpling like paper under his touch.

His muscles barely registered the effort.

Power. He had all this power. Strength of the body, strength of the heart; everything his ancestors could possibly have given him, he _had_ it, and the gifts of the God's Heart beyond that. Such great potential, and it was squandered on a failure Guardian who had been pathetically remiss in his duties not once, but _twice_ now, like a child grabbing at dust as it blows in the wind.

"Knuckles. _Knuckles._" Finally Rouge's voice broke through his troubled thoughts; he lifted his muzzle and looked back at her dully. The fact that her painted face looked genuinely concerned for the first time in their brief interactions gave him pause, as did the fact that she seemed to be rapidly glancing between unrelated directions: by the wall he'd come over, near the remains of the AC, next to a chimney; then, right at the ground, right at… his feet…

Knuckles stared at the thing, sized and shaped like a child's ball cut in half and then pressed face-down to the concrete. A lone orange light dominated its surface, imprinted with a caricature of a brightly grinning face, jagged whiskers sticking out to either side. The light was flashing intermittently, and, if he listened, he could just barely make out a faint _beep. Beep. Beep beep beepbeepbeepbeebebebebebe_-

The bomb went _click_, a click that half a dozen of its fellows echoed across the roof.

_Oh_, he had just enough time to think, and then the roof exploded.


	3. Stories

The thing about explosions is, while they happen extremely quickly and are often rather traumatic, they're also rather short-lived. As soon as she'd seen the bombs, Rouge had spread her wings, much preferring the odds of catching herself somewhere in the apartment's thirty-odd floors to being able to last out unknown explosives. The blast had caught her mid-jump, thrown her into the air, and left her to crash unflatteringly on the outer edge of someone's balcony. She would have fallen a lot further if she weren't a bat, and by connection adapted to grabbing narrow ledges on the fly. All in all, she had a few scrapes, a few bumps, and what felt like a blossoming constellation of bruises. Nothing broken, though, and experimentally rolling her shoulders she determined they had _not_, in fact, snapped out of their sockets the way it had felt when the explosion hit her.

She looked up at the roof, expression darkening further. Here's to hoping that echidna had better reflexes than he looked. If the bomb had gone off right at his feet…

…she'd have a better view once she got back up. She hopped lightly onto the railing and then it was a fairly easy jump to the wall. Though she preferred to fly, she could climb; she just didn't have the advantage of boring into the infrastructure the way Knuckles did.

The roof was still standing, which was an improvement over what she'd expected, but large chunks had been gouged out of the sides, and there was a deep indent where the echidna had been standing. The roof-mounted machinery had taken the worst of it, a crumpled pile of metal that looked like it had taken a cannon blast.

Rouge frowned. Generally, explosives didn't displace so much as they did launch it in all directions. She picked her way across, mindful of anywhere that might crumble underfoot, and looked.

And stopped.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Yes I am fine," Knuckles said flatly, dragging himself into a sitting position to the continued detriment of the metal around him. "Nothing is wrong, thank you for worry."

"Listen, we just had a meet-and-greet with a madman straight out of urban legend who stole an emerald and then tried to blow up both of us. I've had enough going along with this without hearing the full story, and sooner or later _someone_ is going to notice their AC just got an echidna shot through it, so you might want to make this quick: _why aren't you hurt at all_?"

He met her eyes— and then they slid past, looking off at the cityscape. There it was again. Hesitance. Uncertainty. He'd just walked off a point-blank explosion, and here he was worried about… what? _Her_?

"Is not going to be short answer. Or quick." He brushed shrapnel off his shoulders with dismissive flicks. "We should move on. I will tell you," he added, just as she drew breath to argue, "but I will need time to put words together. Is… complicated."

* * *

The evening news reported on the blast, but subtly. There was suspicion of foul play, and the authorities were looking into it, but there weren't any reported conclusions so far. Rouge turned off the radio with a sigh, glancing out the windows at the darkening air. Things were finally cooling off with the passing of the sun, but she wasn't in a frame of mind to properly appreciate it.

What was becoming a familiar shape sidled into view and sat down, resuming the positions they had first taken earlier this afternoon. Only this time he'd doffed the remains of his cloak— unlike him, it hadn't taken very well to being blown up. Its absence showed a few more unusual features, particularly the carpet of moss clinging to his rounded shoulders and a heavy brass necklace. He was still the far better off of the two of them; a chunk of displaced concrete had clipped Rouge in the forehead, and she was nursing the encroaching black eye with an ice pack. "You know, when I heard the rumors about Eggman, I honestly didn't think they were real. That's really how he looks? That wasn't a hologram?"

Knuckles snorted, with a disdainful toss of his head. "Was real. He is very pleased with face. Anywhere he goes, he will go. Where he cannot go, he puts face all over things he sends instead. Like bombs. Or robots."

"You sound like you know him pretty well." They definitely had a history, and from Knuckles' reactions, an unpleasant one.

The echidna's immediate retort was again in his native language; she picked up a few familiar words from what he'd said on the rooftop. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and ventured back into Paeloic: "He is liar, and fool. Does not know what he is playing with."

"I'm just going to venture a guess that this ties into that end of the world thing you brought up."

"Yes."

"Why don't you give me the full version of that?"

Violet eyes slid closed. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and for a moment, there was an almost perfect silence, interrupted only by the distant thrum of passing cars.

"In beginning of time, before people walked ground, there was god Chaos, creator of all. Chaos, beginning and end, all points in cycle. Chaos climb land as wave, fall from sky as rain, run down mountain as river. All points in cycle. After people walked ground, ancestors found god Chaos. Much loved was Chaos, much loved were ancestors by Chaos. There was long peace. Good peace."

"I've heard this part. The echidna tribes worshipped a single god, unlike almost anywhere else in the ancient world at that time. They spread that faith to every tribe they conquered."

Knuckles dipped his beak. "Yes. Was greatest honor, to spread word of Chaos. Bring all to warmth of Chaos. There was… disagreement, about how to do so. Pachacamac, great chief of people, said barbarians must be conquered, brought to glory under echidna. Tikal, priest-queen of Chaos, said barbarians also people, could be reached by peace. Refused duty to help soldiers, refused rites to followers of Pachacamac."

"I can't imagine he took that well."

"He did not. On darkest night, all moons turn away, hide faces. Pachacamac led seven kings into temple of Chaos, onto sacred ground people not meant to walk. Priests fought. Blood spilled into water of Chaos, madness of Pachacamac spilled into Chaos. There was storm. Was left ten score of men, on high ground."

Rouge considered how many people a city in the ancient world would have contained. "What you're saying is, that could happen again. This angry god of yours is still out there."

Knuckles clasped his hands in front of him and slowly spread them apart. There was a _snickt_ of static electricity, and the smell of ozone, and then suddenly sitting between them was an enormous emerald stone. It had to be at least three feet across, and from its proportions, would have been at least two times taller if it weren't missing the entire upper third of it. Its depths were the purest shade of green, flecked with whites and shifting variations of hue. It balanced lightly on the table, almost floating off it, but it _felt_ as if it should be heavy, should buckle the legs of the table underneath it.

And, clearer now than she'd ever heard it, there was that song again: a wordless melody, no sound that a person could replicate. Her hand brushed its facets, and flinched back— it was warm to the touch. She reached out, touched it once more; warm, and pulsing faintly beneath its glass-smooth surface.

"You have been helping much," Knuckles said, his tone genuinely grateful. "But many pieces are still gone. Eggman is hunting them. Others probably will interfere as well. I must find them."

"Whoa, hold on." Rouge stood up. It didn't have much of the effect, as even sitting down he was a full heads' height taller than her, but she swept around the side of the table to get directly in his face. "Is that a _dismissal?_ Gee, Rouge, thank you for taking a couple hours of your life to help avert the apocalypse, but since people are trying to blow you up, I'm just going to go on alone from now? You just told me this _thing_," she jabbed a thumb at the giant stone. "is all that stands between us and a mass extinction. What do you expect me to do, sit twiddling on my thumbs wondering if you made it in time or if I should start investing in life rafts?"

"This is very dangerous," Knuckles shot back. "Is not simple as finding pieces scattered around."

"Then I'll want to make sure my fate is riding on something more than one guy I've known for a day, won't I?" Her ice pack was starting to melt; she paced towards the kitchen and tossed it into the sink, resolving to deal with it later. "Face it big guy, you barely know where anything is in this city, and unless that Eggman is a lot faster than he looks, there's still pieces here. You need my help."

He looked as if he wanted to argue more, but she had anticipated that. "_And_ these aren't exactly pieces of rusty scrap metal we're looking for. We've been lucky enough to grab the ones that people haven't already pocketed, but the whole reason you sought me out in the first place was because people _would_ find them and pick them up, and unless you want to start a life of crime, you'll need someone who can talk them around. And I don't want to see large parts of the world die off, so I'm willing to lend a hand."

She extended her hand. "Do we have an understanding?"

Knuckles grumbled something under his breath. He looked at her hand, her face, and then closed his eyes and sighed.

He took her hand. "This is horrible idea."

"Tough."


	4. Hello, Casinopolis

"That's it?"

A nod.

Rouge sighed, rubbing her temples. "I was really hoping it wasn't."

He looked at her in puzzlement, then back to the building. It was much larger than the others around it, in a district that was far more brightly lit than the others around it. Against the darkened sky, this skyscraper glittered gold. Neon signs swam in his vision, burning strange glyphs into the back of his eyes that he couldn't begin to make sense of. Thank the High Spirit that his ancestors hadn't etched their secrets in fluorescent rainbows. He suspected that even if it were written in his native language, he wouldn't be able to make sense of the signs. One could only imagine how they must have been for the people on the walkways beneath them; he and Rouge had taken up post on the roof of her apartments, from which they could see almost the entire city.

"What is wrong with there?" Besides the sensory abomination that was assailing his retinas from all the way out here, but it was worth asking, just to be polite.

"Casinopolis. Owned and run by Cathode City's very own Mammoth Mogul. If the name didn't tip you off, he happens to have the highest net worth in this entire landmass. He made news recently for trying to buy up the rights to the old Castle Acorn." One turquoise eye regarded him briefly. "…He tried to turn a seven-hundred-year-old historic site into his personal vacation home."

Knuckles' snout wrinkled with distaste. "He is a thief, then."

Rouge shrugged fluidly. "Thief's a strong word. And reserved for people who don't have that many lawyers at their disposal. Mogul is about as shady as you can get, but the Council can't ever get itself together enough to lay a hand on him. I wouldn't be surprised if he's bribing them, honestly. If he's got a hold of those emerald pieces, it's going to be tricky to get them off of him. Especially if he's got any idea how much they're worth."

The guardian bristled, the heavy spines rising off the back of his neck. "If the Heart is not one by turning of the God's tide, all will die."

"Yeah, and you tell him that, and show him that giant emerald you've been so carefully putting together, he's not going to hear 'watery death' over the sound of 'giant pretty stone'. _I_ hardly believed you when you first showed up. You're not exactly convincing, you know."

"He will have to listen."

"Not necessarily." There was a glint in Rouge's eye, a glint that he wasn't sure that he liked and that reminded him of every little thing that made him uncomfortable about her. The light of the moons glinted off her eyes, making them seem to glow in the low light. As the sun had set, she seemed to have come alive, and now she folded her hands in front of her, the deep blue mirrors of her nails making a bridge between her and the distant, glimmering casino. "It'd be awfully convenient if they just… disappeared, wouldn't it? Mogul hasn't had the time to set an appraiser to them. They're just little pieces of green glass to him. He's _rolling_ in jewels, after all, and these are nothing special. An oddity at best." Her words were like silk and velvet all at once; he could see now, why the people of this city so loved to drink in that voice. But her gaze was sharp and bright, and it didn't feel any less like steel even when it was turned away from him, towards the building.

"You would steal shards of the Heart." He felt betrayed, but he had no idea why. He knew nothing about her. That she was a thief should mean nothing to him; if anything, it was an advantage, to know the face of a potential threat before it reared its head. And yet… he didn't want to think of her that way. She'd helped him. Hadn't she?

"Liberate. _Liberate_. They're hardly his to begin with." She draped herself across the railing, looking across the city. "Besides," she added, smirking sideways at him, "You need them back, don't you?"

He looked away from her, fixed his eyes on the structure. The Heart sang to him, more clearly and urgently than ever. She sang to him, and faintly, from far beyond, there was the echo of the lost shard. It lurked, maddening, just out of reach, somewhere he couldn't feel over the insistence of the closer fragments.

His eyes closed. "Yes."

"Well, don't sound too excited." As if the thought had just occurred to her, she disentangled herself from the bar, rolling her shoulders. "If we're going into Casinopolis, I'm going to need to get dressed. " She eyed him briefly. "I don't suppose you have something a little more formal than the—"

"Kilt," he supplied helpfully.

"…Right."

He ignored her tone. Just because these people were savages who didn't understand how to dress themselves didn't mean he was going to fall to their jibes. Although, from the sound of things, he was probably going to have to give some ground at least temporarily, if he was going to fit in with the crowds.

Which meant another favor he'd owe her, once this all was done. He really only had a couple of kilts, and his formalwear probably wouldn't impress the locals.

This was just going to be a riot, he could tell.

* * *

"Not bad," Rouge said thoughtfully, stepping back to study the effect with the advantage of distance. "You clean up better than I expected."

Knuckles directed a withering look in response, and said nothing. The dignity of words seemed to have been lost to him for the moment, perhaps in the flood of other dignities that had vacated in the process.

He was in a suit.

If he had anything to say about the matter he would never touch one again in his life, but he was in a suit. It was uncomfortable in most of the ways he had expected and a few novel ways that managed to impress him with the malice thoughtfully hewn into the garments by their creator.

Rouge had acquired a floor-length evening gown in black, with cuts down either to accommodate her wings. There was another, equally generous cut up her left leg, but what that could be meant to accommodate escaped him. He chalked it up to the growing list of the bat's oddities. Regardless, she looked a lot better than he felt. He caught her looking at him- that same, calculating stare, though more direct this time than her usual.

"You're just thrilled with this whole prospect, aren't you?"

Knuckles grunted. "And you are?"

A shrug, but she looked pleased. Too pleased. "I have to admit, I've always wondered how I'd match up. You aren't too shabby of a treasure hunter yourself. Haven't you ever wondered?"

Had he wondered? Plenty. He'd wondered what was off the edge of the island. He'd wondered if maybe, just maybe, people were out there, like him, if maybe all he had to do was take a small trip down when the island passed over land and he'd find everyone. In his wildest dreams, his family was there, his tribe.

Had he wondered if he could feasibly rob any of the hypothetical people he might meet?

"No."

"What is _up_ with you? You're perfectly willing to barge in demanding answers and waving your grand quest around, but the moment you have to take it from someone, you get cold feet?" Her hands were planted on her hips, an unexpected fire in her bright blue eyes.

The guardian's lip wrinkled. His heavy hand curled into a fist, drawing taut the muscles in his arm. "Intruding on forbidden ground, wanting what is not yours to take, is highest crime. All punished once. Will not be again."

"Which brings us back to square one. Either we steal these things now, or a watery death god is going to level Cathode." Rouge paused, glanced up at him. "I can't believe I said that without a trace of irony, but I just did."

"You have point. If you did not, I would not be here in /_these godforsaken leg traps._/"

"Great. I'm driving."

She was past him and into the building before he could process the abrupt change in topic.

"What."

Her voice floated up the stairway. "You're not clambering your way across the city in a rental suit. It's probably going to get wrecked anyway, but we're going to need it in one piece to make an entrance. So I'm driving."

"Wait! What is—" He preemptively cut himself off. She didn't need to know that. He could figure it out. It had to be some kind of transport, or what she had said made no sense…

There was a low roar from below, as of a good-sized machine coming to life under familiar fingers. It drifted on the night air, muffled slightly, but it had to be very close, within the complex of the club, at least—

Oh. _Oh_.

The ancestors had to have it out for him.


	5. Making An Entrance

"Well, here we are. Try not to go blind too quickly."

Casinopolis appeared to glitter from a distance. Up close, the complex blazed gold beyond any possible measure of restraint. The understated brassy hues that Cathode was so known for were polished to a shine, generators and fans transformed into neon pastiches of themselves. Signs assailed the senses from every direction, advertising riches beyond her wildest dreams, and the velvet carpet _shushed_ under her heels, practically swallowing them with every step.

"We'll need to take a look around before we get down to business. Any ideas?"

Silence.

Rouge glanced back, frowning faintly. The echidna was staring intently straight ahead. She directed a look in the same direction— empty air, unless he was captivated with that island of neon palm trees.

She cleared her throat; he flinched, blinking like a surprised owl before looking down at her as if he'd just noticed her. "Right. Looking. Yes. We are going." Then he shook his head, and muttered something in his native language.

That was just beginning to get annoying; she'd enjoyed a long career of picking up people's murmured asides, but while she could hear his words just fine, they were still useless gobbledygook. He could very well be saying anything, and while he didn't have the grace to outright mislead, there was an awful lot of things that could be covered under the heading of 'generally uneasy but concise statement'.

He returned her look with a dismissive wave of one clawed hand. "It is nothing. We are focusing now."

She shrugged airily, dismissing the thought for the moment. Let him play his games. This was her element, not his, after all, and if it came up again, she could adequately deal. She set off through the grand foyer, not looking back to assure that he'd followed— she could hear him matching pace just fine. His footfalls were unusually heavy, even for his size and frame; something she wondered at briefly. Her associate was simply full of surprises, and very determined to keep his little secrets. _Guardian_, Eggman had called him.

As much as he clearly intended to be out of her life as soon as possible, she was a little too interested to just let it slide. This was something big, whether or not all that about a wrathful god was true; and, fantastic as it sounded, she was actually coming to believe it to some degree. Certainly stranger had happened in recent times.

They drifted through the crowd, mingling adequately; as it was composed of socialites who largely favored their own elbow room, it was rather thin. Still, a fair number of them were fans, and it was all too easy to talk to them.

"It _must_ be a special occasion if you're here," remarked a young lion, his mane half-grown and combed back with nervous strokes. "Some kind of party?"

_Aha._ "Oh, of a sort. You're a bit early, though." She shifted her weight, hooking one wing around Knuckles' arm in a gesture that looked like fawning and also served to catch him from where he had been unsubtly trying to edge off sideways. "Who else has arrived?"

The lion's eyes lit up conspiratorially and he hushed his tone, even crouching a bit. "I've seen Mister Mogul himself around, along with some fellow I didn't recognize. What's the event?"

There was an edge to her smirk that she couldn't completely restrain; she passed it as a mischievous look. "Oh, I think you'll know when it starts." Then she glided away, guiding her not at all reluctant associate along for the ride.

"What's up with you?" she asked, once they were well out of the lion's earshot.

His eyes had that distant, searching look that she was coming to associate with him keying into his secret awareness. "Shards are moving. Being in hand. It is low room, three men. Two are talking."

"That much from three pieces of emerald?"

"We are very close." A thoughtful frown. "But still, is… odd. Third man feels… wrong."

If this was going to become a long-term arrangement she was going to have to coach him on vague foreboding statements. She couldn't work with 'he feels wrong to my special brain hearing powers'. She'd really prefer things like 'he is carrying a gun', 'he is a wizard', or maybe 'he's about to come around that corner in three seconds.' "So they're all together? That makes things easier… and harder." She surveyed the crowd a moment, then hung a left and headed away from the main hall.

"No. Three places. One—" Rouge cut him off with the wave of a wing.

"Save it until we're alone. I want to check on something."

Mammoth Mogul was a lot of things. Right now, the real point of consideration was that he was an elephant, and by anyone's reasoning the tallest individual present. And there he _was_, that booming laugh wasn't hard to place, nor was the rest of him, given he had chosen to make his appearance in a glittery golden suit. She couldn't help but cringe at that. Let it never be said that Casinopolis was _not_ hewn in Mogul's own image. The goddamned narcissist.

"Well, what an honor! The visionary himself, here among us mere mortals who work for a living." The words left her mouth sweetly, without the remotest trace of her actual opinions.

"The honor is all mine, miss Ellery. I didn't expect to see you here." To say nothing else of Mogul, he had the kind of voice that could sell water to a fish. His yellow eyes then shifted— and narrowed exaggeratedly, as if he were squinting across the dramatic schism of height. "And who's this, then?"

An interesting change had come over Knuckles; he'd straightened his shoulders and put back his head, looking more confident than he'd ever been since being introduced

"Yautepeca," he said, without missing a beat.

Mogul's expression was an accurate image of what Rouge herself was presently feeling, though she had enough composure to not let it immediately be known.

"…Unusual name," Mogul said slowly, the end of his trunk twisting a bit as if trying to work its way through the thought. "Is it… Baltic, perhaps?"

"From very far away. Small country. You would not have heard of it." Even without visible pupils, he gave the impression of watching Mogul very, very intently.

Rouge's poker face slipped just minutely, in the form of the upwards twitch of one eyebrow. _Huh._

A small guffaw escaped the corner of Mogul's mouth, and for a moment he looked surprised at the sound. Then it erupted into a full-blown chortle that made Rouge's sensitive ears seek solace against the sides of her head. "Miss Ellery, you certainly keep some extraordinary company!"

She forced herself into a much fainter laugh, cupping it in a raised hand. "The ordinary kind simply doesn't interest me anymore," she said, batting her eyelashes in a blatantly surreptitious manner.

Someone nearby produced a rough, wheezing cough, one that sounded like it'd be more at home in a tuberculosis wing rather than a grand casino. After a moment, she spotted its source, a lanky hyena with his eyes set in deep bags. "Mister Mogul," he began imploringly, in a breathy voice that was surprisingly smooth for the abuse its larynx seemed to have suffered, "there is still very much to discuss—"

Something dark moved behind Mogul's eye, something that dropped like a cold weight in the pit of Rouge's stomach. It was gone so quickly that she almost wasn't sure it had been there. "Winters," he laughed, clapping the hyena about the shoulders with a gesture that threatened to bowl him over, "Look around you. This is a _party_, my friend. Business has to relinquish its coat and hat at the front door, and even then you have to take it in small amounts. We have the company of a lovely young lady," Rouge picked the cue to blush, "and you want to talk _business_." He shook his head disappointedly.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to interrupt anything _important_," Rouge teased a white curl out of her bangs, brushing it away from her face.

"Not at all!" Mogul said quickly.

_Yes, in fact_, his companion's expression said, at about the same speed.

"Well, there's no hurry," The fact that she could practically _hear_ Knuckles fidget next to her added a pinch of much-needed sincerity to her smile. "It's a long night. I'm sure I'll see you around..?"

"All night, my dear!" He tipped his wine glass in a grand gesture. "We can catch up some other time."

"Of course." Rouge smiled sweetly. As they were released from Mogul's company, she added, "Well, that's one obstacle dealt with."

"He is… strange," Knuckles conceded, after mulling over his choice of adjectives a while. "First, he seems… as predator. Threat. Then he seems idiot."

"There's a lot of rumors about Mogul. I'd rather not confirm any of them personally tonight." She paused, taking a moment to study the person she was talking to. "…Though you're really one to talk. _Yautepec?_"

"Yautepeca," he corrected. "Guardian, in this word. He asks _who_, I give that. You asked for name, I don't have. It is… emporize." Improvise.

_Guardian again. Well, it explains why that Doctor hailed him as such._ "Let's stick with what I can pronounce." Rouge studied the area appraisingly, piquing her ears for anyone in hiding. It seemed empty enough, a small alcove away from the crowds, partially hidden by the shade of an enormous potted plant. Now and then Mogul's laugh could be heard over the general hubbub. "Now, about those shards…"

"Two above, one in earth." He tapped his foot on the ground with a smug air. "Earth, I feel better. Dark place, old metal. Far down."

"Sounds like the Lower City." At his puzzled look, she elaborated. "Cathode grew up, not out. The oldest buildings are the foundation for the newer ones, and while they're sealed off, there's plenty of ways to get down there. Mogul's got too much to lose to just leave a highway like that open, though… it's bound to be guarded. The other two?"

"One is in room. As was said. Other…" he squinted, furrowing his heavy brow. "Hard to feel. Sounding from thick wall… like in cave. When voice come back." A small, frustrated gesture with one hand. "I do not know word."

"Echo," she supplied.

A shrug. "If you say. Echo. Bounce around inside but not come out much. Closer to here than room."

"Surrounded by thick walls… a vault." Of course. Even without any idea of its value, it was a hefty chunk of emerald. Mogul would make an effort to put it somewhere safe. Pun unintended. A vault, a room, and the underground. The room was apparently the site of a debate, possibly appraising the shard itself. Which meant that there was a chance they'd put it in the vault and she could snag both at once… but they wouldn't if the first one was stolen too quickly. That left…

"We're going after the Lower City first." She dipped briefly down the front of her dress, noting with interest that Knuckles flushed to the exact shade of his fur and looked away— and produced a small silver device, looking no more impressive than a hairclip. This, she presented to him. "Look for an elevator with a basement floor. We'll keep in touch with these." As soon as he took the first device, she clipped a second to her ear, tipping her head so that he could see it clearly. "Hold the button to send, let go once you're done talking so you can hear me answer. Don't yak off where someone can see you, and if you get caught, smash the transmitter. Don't get in the elevator before I'm there, just let me know when you find it. All right?"

A solemn nod; he clipped the transmitter to one of his quills with surprising gentleness given his clawed hands. "Where will you be?"

"Oh, eavesdropping, changing clothes, getting a few things ready. Nothing you have to worry your little head about." She smiled sweetly.

He didn't return the look.


End file.
